The Radicalism of the American Revolution - Part 3, Chapter 15 Summary & Analysis

Gordon S. Wood

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Part 3, Chapter 15 Summary and Analysis

Already powerless and anachronistic in the north by the 18th century, the gentry are attacked by an unlikely critic, Abraham Bishop of Connecticut. The Yale-trained Republican lawyer returns from a tour of Europe to oppose ratifying the Constitution, and turns his polemics on monarchy. The Federalists' projects have left them open to charges of influence peddling and building "a British funding system, Americanized." Better than his contemporaries, Bishop realizes most people consider culture a "mere human invention," and sets out to deconstruct culture so ordinary people will demand to take over their own interests.

Men of elevated birth and talents continue to exert immense influence over the people and intend to lead them down the garden path to monarchy by making them again feel inferior and humiliated. Precisely because they are extraordinary, these men are dangerous and unnecessary for...